This week the Trust was placed on a list of nine being investigated after they were found to have higher than average death rates.

Outside Lincoln County Hospital Credit: ITV News Central

The Trust runs Lincoln County Hospital, Grantham and District Hospital and the Boston Pilgrim Hospital.

Mr Walker claims he was forced to quit for refusing to meet Whitehall targets for non-emergency patients.

He told the BBC:

"This is a culture of fear, a culture of oppression - of information that's either going to embarrass a civil servant or embarrass a minister.

"These are big problems. And if you consider that the people that have been running the NHS have created that culture of fear, they need either to be held to account or new people need to be brought in to change that culture."